


Outlaws

by MirrorMystic



Series: Among Eagles [15]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Heist, IN SPACE!, Mercenaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 04:17:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21030128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorMystic/pseuds/MirrorMystic
Summary: There’s trouble brewing in the Outer Rim. For mercenaries and rough-and-tumble Rim colonists, “trouble” is just the status quo. But for the remote mining colony of Copperfel, their trouble is just beginning. For the rogue sorcerer Maxwell and his newfound apprentice have arrived on their planet, two harbingers of catastrophe walking hand-in-hand, and they seek a power that will change the world...





	Outlaws

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome back to Among Eagles! It was a long time coming-- I started this WIP all the way back at the beginning of September-- but it's finally here! The galaxy's not all heroes and capes. There are hunters there, too. I hope you all enjoy the read!

~*~  
  
The hatch doors opened with a bang.  
  
Aabha strode on through, her head held high, her entourage close behind. Kit and Lily, her left and right hands, were right beside her-- right where they belonged. But Lily wasn’t wearing her oh-so-fashionable dove-gray trenchcoat, and Kit wasn’t wearing her checkered yellow scarf. All three of them were in full armor, and all three of them were armed for war.  
  
Marines lined the corridor. They wore dark blue armor with white stripes down their arms and rank insignia on their pauldrons; the colors of the Sol Systems Alliance. They snapped to attention as they strode past.  
  
At the head of the corridor, an Alliance captain snapped off a salute. Aabha returned it in kind, and the man stepped aside.  
  
The cramped corridor opened up into a vast, vaulted facility. Curved banks of control consoles rose in tiers around a central dais, like auditorium seating at a university. Rising from the central dais, and filling the central pillar of the room, was a huge, three-dimensional hololith of the battlefield: their flagship, and the liberation fleet arrayed at their heels, facing down a floating behemoth above a darkened, poisoned world.  
  
On a balcony overlooking the rows and rows of command consoles was a woman in the midnight-blue and silver thread of the Alliance Navy. She stood, her hands clasped behind her back, her stern face pinched with concentration as she stared at the holoterminal, making sense of the litany of reports being shouted across the room by her officers.  
  
“All fleet elements reporting,” an officer said. “All fighter wings are standing by for interdiction duties, and all capital ships have weapons ready.”  
  
“I want the whole fleet synced to our targeting computers,” the woman said firmly.  
  
She reached up, circuitry glinting beneath the skin of her hands. The strategic display zoomed in to the enemy ship in the distance-- a huge, bulbous, alien thing. With a deft flick of her fingers, a set of targeting crosshairs were centered on the titanic ship.  
  
“Fire on my order only,” she commanded.  
  
“Aye, aye!”  
  
The woman turned as Aabha’s group approached.  
  
“Admiral Weiss,” Aabha saluted. “Agent Aabha Puri, reporting for duty, ma’am.”  
  
“Agent Puri,” Helen Weiss began with the slightest hint of fondness, returning Aabha’s salute. “Welcome aboard the _ Vernichterlanze _ . Is this your first time aboard an Alliance dreadnought?”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“Well, you’re just in time to see the show,” Helen said, with just a hint of a smile. She was so unlike Robyn, stiff where Robyn was easygoing, stern where Robyn was cocksure. But in that moment, as she turned back towards the bridge, Aabha could see a flicker of Robyn’s daredevil smile.  
  
“Admiral!” an officer called out. “All fleet elements report target lock and await your command.”  
  
“Fire!” Helen barked.  
  
As one, the fleet’s main batteries lit up, sending a constellation of shining, ship-killing lances streaking across the distance. The Malefic supercarrier, a lumbering brown behemoth more meat and chitin than machine, seemed to lift its vast bulk skyward in wonder moments before the bombardment came crashing down.  
  
“Hit!” the gunnery officer cried. “Direct hit!”  
  
Explosions rippled across the titan’s surface, the great behemoth merely flinching from an opening volley that could level cities. The Malefic ship groaned, gaps sliding open in its chitinous plating. Like a giant rising from the sea floor and sloughing off sand, or a cloud of flies rising from a corpse, a huge swarm of drones rose to meet the Alliance fleet.  
  
“Enemy has launched fighters!” the officer of detection reported.  
  
“All strike wings, push forward! Defend the fleet!” Admiral Weiss commanded. “Gunnery, anything that slips past the net, light ‘em up!”  
  
“Yes, ma’am!”  
  
The fleet’s complement of starfighters met the incoming swarm head-on. All along the flanks of the Vernichterlanze, streams of tracer fire shot out into the night, its nimbler guns swatting fighters out of the sky while its main batteries charged another shot.  
  
At Admiral Weiss’ command, the fleet fired another coordinated lance strike. The combined firepower slammed into the Malefic supercarrier and smashed it to the side, leaving a burning, glowing gouge down its flank. The force of the coordinated blasts set the huge ship listing to one side, foul smoke rising from its hull, fires the size of cities blazing upon its surface. But the behemoth was not deterred.  
  
With another thunderous groan, waves of bone-white craft flew out from gaps in the carrier’s chitinous plates, rising on plumes of white smoke.  
  
Alarms rang throughout the Vernichterlanze’s CIC.  
  
“Boarding pods!” the officer of detection cried out.  
  
“Shields up!”  
  
The Vernichterlanze lit its shields with a gleam of electric blue. The swarm of boarding pods, thinned but not stopped by the fleet’s fighter screen and the storm of point defense fire, slammed into the bubble of shining blue. They exploded, annihilated in great gouts of azure flame and crackling lightning, by the dozens, by the hundreds.  
  
Aabha watched the massacre, aghast.  
  
“They’re killing themselves!” she cried.  
  
Admiral Weiss grimly shook her head. “They always have more…”  
  
The sustained onslaught began taking its toll on the ship. The Vernichterlanze’s shields, optimized against energy weapons, strained against the relentless tide of kinetic impacts. Soon, the first pods began to break through. They punched into the ship’s armored hull and pried open the gap with armored claws. A putrid stench swept through the ship’s corridors, along with shrieking ghouls with fire in their eyes…  
  
“Breach!” an officer reported. “Multiple hull breaches, decks one, five, and seven!”  
  
“All security stations, stand by to repel boarders!” Admiral Weiss barked. She glanced over her shoulder, to Aabha and her team. “Agent Puri. My men would certainly appreciate your support.”  
  
“Understood,” Aabha said. She nodded to her girls.  
  
Kit drew her sword. Lily racked her shotgun.  
  
Aabha raised her chakrams in salute, and clashed her weapons against theirs. She spun the ring blades in her hands, magicked fire dancing along the blades.  
  
“Alright, ladies,” Aabha grinned. “Let’s move out!”  
  
~*~  
  
“Aabha?”  
  
Aabha squeaked in surprise and dropped her dataslate on her face. She sat up on her couch in the lounge, to discover herself being studied by a pair of iridescent, insectoid eyes. .  
  
Aabha blinked. “Oh. Hey, Ambrosia.”  
  
Aabha had admitted that there were some things about Ambrosia’s unglamoured form that were mildly unsettling. Her eyes, the chitinous sheen of her skin, the flange to her voice, her particular way of clasping her hands that seemed reminiscent of a praying mantis. But she was still Ambrosia underneath it all-- still an unfailing sweetheart.  
  
“Hello, dearie,” Ambrosia smiled. “You’re up late. I’m surprised to see you without Kit and Lily close behind. Can’t sleep?”  
  
Warmth flickered across Aabha’s cheeks. “Oh, they’re not… sleeping.”  
  
“Oh, that won’t do at all,” Ambrosia tutted, dismayed. “We should all be sure to get our proper rest.”  
  
Aabha coughed. “Yes. Well. What are you doing up?”  
  
“I thought I’d come down to the lounge, see if I could put on a kettle for some tea,” Ambrosia chittered. “Miss Yuna is awake, and desired my company. It seems we’re a ship full of night owls.”  
  
“Well, the Sparrow’s day-night cycle _ is _ set to Earth-standard,” Aabha chuckled.  
  
Without her glamour, Ambrosia’s wings were always visible, rather than only manifesting when she needed to use them. They glinted in the light, falling from her shoulders like a cape. Ambrosia chittered, and her wings flitted in amusement.  
  
“What were you reading so intently, dear?” Ambrosia wondered.  
  
“Mission reports,” Aabha admitted, sheepish. She glanced down to her dataslate and flicked the screen off. “They’re, you know, pretty dry, so in my head I tend to… embellish them.”  
  
“Embellish them.”  
  
“Daydream, more like it,” Aabha giggled. “Syl always told me it was a bad habit. ‘We do not fight for the thrill. It is a means to an end.’ But Morgan always indulged my imagination. As long as we didn’t have any work to do, of course.”  
  
Ambrosia gestured to the couch and Aabha scooted over, patting the cushion beside her. Ambrosia sat down, poised and regal and sitting up straight so she didn’t crush her wings against the backrest. Even sitting, though, she still clasped her hands in that peculiar manner of hers, tented above her knees.  
  
“I wish I could have met your mentors,” Ambrosia mused. “You must miss them a great deal.”  
  
“I do,” Aabha exhaled. “I mean, they practically raised me.”  
  
Aabha stopped short, a flash of guilt gnawing at her chest. She looked away, tugging at her braid.  
  
“...That probably sounds terrible, doesn’t it?” Aabha muttered. “Kit never knew her father. Lily and Lila did, and he was a crime lord. If I ask them for advice, I have a pretty good idea what they’ll say. The thing is, I don’t know if I want my dad out of my life. But I don’t know if I want him in it, either.”  
  
“These things take time, dearie,” Ambrosia cooed. “For my part, I don’t have an idyllic relationship with my own father, so I’m hardly unbiased. Would you still care to hear my advice?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Ambrosia leaned in close, a hand to her mouth.  
  
“Always side with the spouse!”  
  
Aabha giggled. “Is… Is that right?”  
  
“Oh, sure!” Ambrosia chortled. “Of course, I can hardly speak from experience. But look at you! Despite your youth, you have more experience with love than I. That makes _ you _ the expert!”  
  
“Oh, I _ hope _ not,” Aabha snickered.  
  
“Having fun, you two?”  
  
Yuna descended the steps in an elegant frost-blue nightgown, a gentle smile upon her lips. There was a strange duality to Yuna; her mannerisms and her clothing were always so gentle and delicate, like her nightgown, but then you get one look at her bare arms and her powerful physique, and you remember that Yuna could crush a man’s skull in the crook of her elbow.  
  
It was a duality that Ambrosia certainly found enchanting. That is, until she jolted to her feet with a start.  
  
“Your tea! It quite slipped my mind. Forgive me, Miss Yuna.”  
  
“It’s quite alright,” Yuna smiled, laying a fond hand in Aabha’s hair. “It’s so easy to dote on her, isn’t it?”  
  
“Get off,” Aabha chided, playfully swatting her hand away.  
  
Yuna smiled. She joined Ambrosia in the kitchenette, showing her way around the cupboards and finally getting started on that tea. A strange warmth flickered in Aabha’s chest-- along with a certain melancholy, one she couldn’t quite place.  
  
“Would you like anything, dear?” Ambrosia called.  
  
“No, that’s… fine,” Aabha replied.  
  
And as Ambrosia turned back towards the counter, chortling along to something Yuna said, it occurred to Aabha what that feeling was: nostalgia. Her mother and her spinster aunt, making her tea in the middle of the night. She was nostalgic for something she’d never had.  
  
“So, what were you up to, Aabha? Admiring Ambrosia’s antlers, were you?”  
  
“Oh, stop,” Ambrosia chided, patting Yuna on the arm. “Mine just look like antennae. Yours look like a crown, fit for a queen.”  
  
They tittered, together. Aabha glanced down at her dataslate with a grimace.  
  
“...No, actually,” Aabha admitted. “I was reading mission reports, and daydreaming, and most of all, I was putting off finally giving my dad a call, like I’ve been putting it off all week.”  
  
Yuna and Ambrosia looked up from the counter. Aabha flinched at the concern in their eyes. She pulled her eyes away, staring down at the slate propped up on her lap.  
  
“There’s no shortage of surrogate family on this ship, and for that, I’m grateful,” Aabha mused, “but I can’t help but feel a little guilty, thinking about my dad. I told Lia I would call; I have no choice if I want to get her comm frequency. And without Morgan and Syl sending him monthly reports, I should really keep him caught up myself.”  
  
Aabha pawed at her face in embarrassment.  
  
“But now? I would sooner call up Morgan and Syl and see how _they're _doing than check up on my own father.”  
  
Yuna shrugged one shoulder. “What’s stopping you?”  
  
Aabha sank into her seat and blew out a belabored sigh. “...I don’t know. Nerves? A few years of baggage, maybe?”  
  
“Well, what’s stopping you from calling Morgan and Syl?” Ambrosia offered.  
  
“Oh.” Aabha blinked. “Timezones? For all I know, it’s the middle of the night over at the Academy, too.”  
  
Aabha blew out a sigh. She looked up, wistful.  
  
“You know… despite everything, I’m happy. Is that weird?” Aabha smiled, warm. “I have two girlfriends who I know would follow me to Hell and back. I’m tentatively letting my dad and my ex back into my life. There’s no casework looming over our heads, just a trip back to the Watchtower to drop off Ambrosia with Order Intelligence. I’m coming up on two months as agent-in-command, and I haven’t led us all to our deaths yet. After all my anxiety at the start, things finally feel like they’re going to be okay.”  
  
“Morgan and Syl would be so proud of you,” Yuna cooed. “You should go ahead and give them a call.”  
  
“Maybe I will,” Aabha said. “You know, Syl always said there was a rhythm to a soldier’s life. Wait, then hurry up. Hurry up, then wait. I think I get what she means by that, now. Everything’s finally quieted down, but I still feel like I should be doing something.”  
  
“You’ve been working so hard, dearie,” Ambrosia tittered. “You should take some time to sit back. Relax, and just enjoy the ride.”  
  
~*~  
  
Nyx felt sick.  
  
It wasn’t the train ride-- at least, she was reasonably sure it wasn’t. It wasn’t the surreal sensation of whirring along on a frictionless rail, or the hypnotic strobing of tunnel lights past the windows. It wasn’t the vibrations of the train car, channeled into her skull by her cheek pressed against the cool glass, or her horns rattling against the wall at every bump in the track.  
  
Her time beyond the temple was filled with new experiences, not all of them pleasant. But Nyx could tolerate discomfort. She’d spent the whole ride to this dust bowl huddled in the cargo pod of a one-man skiff, hugging her knees to her chest. Discomfort was something she could tolerate.  
  
But the silence...  
  
The silence gnawed at her.  
  
“Welcome back,” Maxwell mused. He was sitting, facing her, his cane flat across his lap.  
  
Nyx frowned, furrowing her brows beneath her hood. She was… asleep? An ache in her gut derailed her thoughts, and she groaned, a hand over her stomach. Maxwell smirked, reached into his cloak and withdrew a ration bar.  
  
Nyx took an eager bite and got a mouthful of wax paper. Maxwell plucked the bar out of her hands, unwrapped it, and handed it back. Nyx chewed thoughtfully, studying the bar in her hands. Military-grade, nutritious, and about as flavorful as the wax paper it was wrapped in.  
  
“Curious,” Maxwell mused, stroking his beard. “I was not certain you needed to eat. Or sleep. Perhaps now that you’re no longer being sustained by your mother’s power, new needs have arisen.”  
  
Nyx looked up, studying him with her eerie golden eyes. She mouthed her words before speaking, as if rehearsing them, unused to speaking out loud. The spirits who once kept her counsel did not need to speak out loud. Communicating like this felt slow, clumsy.  
  
“Why did we take the train?” Nyx asked. “Why didn’t we keep the ship?”  
  
“This planet is notorious for its windstorms. They’re very particular about who can fly, and where. As for the train… well, we can’t just walk everywhere, you know.”  
  
Maxwell chuckled, clutching the cane laying across his lap. The eyes of the twin serpents engraved in the wood glittered emerald in the light.  
  
“I could have magicked us here, I suppose,” Maxwell says, “but such things aren’t done lightly. Not that I mind. We all need limits to push against, to help us grow, to evolve. And you are a fascinating specimen. I look forward to discovering yours.”  
  
Nyx nodded, mute. Rust-red walls whipped past her window. She found herself gazing outside, despite there not being much of a view. But whatever she was looking for, she couldn’t put it into words.  
  
At last, sunlight bloomed in the tunnels. Nyx hissed and flinched away from the light, reflexively tugging at her hood. But as the train came into the station and slowed to a halt, Nyx slowly turned her face to the light, and couldn’t look away.  
  
Copperfel was a notoriously flat planet, full of plains and plateaus. Unfortunately, all that flat land meant it was plagued with tornadoes. So, what was an enterprising settler to do? Well, if you were the Alliance Engineering Corps, you created your own wind breakers, and blasted open your own valleys. Now, save for isolated rural communities and sprawling wind farms, the vast majority of Copperfel’s population lived underground-- in cities like the Redmond Hive, an entire city carved into the sides of an artificial canyon.  
  
Nyx ran up to the balcony rail, drinking in the breathtaking view. She craned her head up, taking in the dizzying verticality of the city-- from the lip of the plateau high above, to the Redmond River far below, all the way at the base of the valley. Everywhere, skyscrapers lined the canyon walls like the columns of some great temple, chrome and plasteel pillars holding up the sky. Huge banks of elevator tubes ran up the sides of the canyon; every dozen levels or so, rings of magrails ran the perimeter. But the centerpiece of the Redmond Hive was the Spire, an island floating in the canyon’s open air, connected to the canyon walls by a spiderweb of bridges and catwalks. It was a cone, broad at the top and narrowing at the bottom. The Spire’s upper levels were a spaceport, a broad lattice of hangar bays, landing platforms, and air traffic control towers. The lower levels were the administrative hub of the city; the city hall, port authority, and PDF garrison all in one.  
  
If they had taken the ship, they would have had to land in the Spire’s upper levels and then go through customs, under the scrutiny of the local PDF-- which is precisely why Maxwell had them take the train.  
  
None of that mattered to Nyx right now. She was busy gazing out at the city, her eyes wide, her tail flitting back and forth with childlike wonder. But then Maxwell tapped his cane against the rail, and cut the moment short.  
  
“Let’s get you something to eat, hm?” Maxwell mused. “And after that, we’ll attend to business. Come along, now.”  
  
“Yes, Professor,” Nyx nodded.  
  
She gave one last longing look over the balcony rail, before she stepped out of the light, and followed obediently in Maxwell’s shadow.  
  
~*~  
  
Across the canyon, another man was stepping off of a train. He was a big man, with a shaved head and a face lined with scars. But then again, this was a mining town, and as he shuffled off the platform, his hands sullenly stuffed into his coat pockets, he could almost have been mistaken for a local. Almost, since his open coat did little to hide the battered, off-white armor underneath, the mechanical bulk of which made him stand head and shoulders over the crowd.  
  
Kresnik looked up, studying the cliff face above him, lined with catwalks, storefronts, and tinted office windows. He clicked open his comm, clumsily fiddling with a navigation app with his huge, armored fingers. A holographic trail flashed out of his comm, directing him down the street.  
  
He clicked his comm shut as soon as he’d gotten a good look. No need to tell the whole world where he was going.  
  
The bar was nestled halfway up a residential hab stack, as if someone had taken a wooden stake and hammered it into a concrete wall. Coffin apartments stretched out above and below; coffee on their way to the morning shift, liquor on the way back.  
  
As Kresnik stepped inside, turning sideways so he could shimmy his armored bulk through the front door, the garish sunlight of the canyon morphed into dim lamplight and cigarette smoke. It was a homey place-- the kind of bar that still had a counter made of real wood. That must’ve been a pain to build, hauling up lumber all the way from the river bank below.  
  
Of course, Kresnik was hardly in any mood to appreciate local business. He shouldered his way through the bar regulars to one of the private booths in the back, and slid open the soundproofed door.  
  
Raney blinked up at him, puzzled.  
  
“Where the hell were you?”  
  
“Took the wrong train,” Kresnik grumbled. “I got lost.”  
  
“Got lost?” Raney wondered. She pulled the table towards her so Kresnik could squeeze his way into a seat. “Nik, it’s a grid system.”  
  
“Yeah, and that grid is a maze of goddamn elevators and train lines,” Kresnik said. He grunted. “...Can you pull the table back a bit more?”  
  
Raney rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t have this problem if you would just buy a better suit. Modern armor doesn’t need to be that clunky any more. But no, you still want to wear that fossil.”  
  
“Hey, ain’t no suit better than this one,” Kresnik grinned. He proudly clapped a gauntleted hand against his chestplate. “This baby could stop a tank shell. Probably.”  
  
“It’s called keeping a low profile, Nik,” Raney said dryly.  
  
“That’s what the coat’s for!”  
  
“Can you close it?”  
  
Kresnik glanced down. The lapels of his brown leather duster sat a solid foot apart on his chestplate. Honestly, it was a wonder he was able to get his arms through the sleeves.  
  
“...No,” he admitted, sheepish. He cleared his throat. “Well, at least I’m not walking around in a military-grade camo-cloak.”  
  
“Please, Nik,” Raney scoffed. She touched an activation stud by her collar, and her slate-gray cloak morphed into a rich chestnut to blend with the walls. “It’s called fashion.”  
  
The door slid open. Someone loomed in the doorway-- a woman in sleek body armor with olive skin, dark hair cut short and choppy, and an austere expression. Like Kresnik, she had chosen to wear a coat over her armor; unlike Kresnik’s duster, hers was a gorgeous silk haori in midnight blue, trimmed with silver. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of amber sunglasses, and a sheathed sword hung from her belt.  
  
A super, Kresnik assumed. Only supers used swords.  
  
“Hello, there,” she purred. “Is this seat taken?”  
  
“It sure isn’t,” Kresnik grinned. “Although, Raney here’s married, so if you wanna sit with the single fella--”  
  
“I would if there was room,” she said dryly. She slid into the booth beside Raney, and pulled the soundproofed door shut behind her.  
  
“Kresnik, this is Ophelia,” Raney said. “She’s a friend.”  
  
“Huh? How come _ I’ve _ never met her?”  
  
“I have other friends besides _ you _ , Nik,” Raney rolled her eyes.  
  
“Oh yeah? Are they all bounty hunters, too?”  
  
“Raney here tells me you two are going through a bit of a dry spell,” Ophelia began.  
  
“Yeah…” Kresnik groaned, and blew out a sigh. “We got a nice little chunk of change from our last job in Tir space. Took some time off from huntin’. But the money didn’t last as long as I thought it would, so… we’re back on the market again.”  
  
“What did you spend it all on?” Ophelia asked. “Let me guess, big guy: strippers and poker.”  
  
“Er… no,” Kresnik squirmed. He scratched the back of his head, sheepish. “Actually, I bought Raney and Elise tickets to Paradiso for their anniversary. It’s coming up.”  
  
Ophelia blinked. “Wow. I… wouldn’t have expected that from you.”  
  
“Oh, now what is _ that _ supposed to mean?” Kresnik huffed, indignant.  
  
“Why don’t we get to business?” Raney suggested.  
  
“Right,” Ophelia said. “What do you know about an Ivan Harkov?”  
  
“Nothing. Let me look him up,” Kresnik said. He clicked open his comm.  
  
Ophelia clicked Kresnik’s comm shut. “You won’t find him on the Association network. He’s not wanted by the Alliance. He’s a Sergeant in Copperfel Planetary Defense, a desk drone who’s been breathing down the necks of the local mining companies. He’s real particular about who has mining rights, and where. In other words, he’s a nuisance. My client wants him… dealt with.”  
  
“I dunno about this,” Kresnik muttered.  
  
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re scared of a little off-network job,” Ophelia scoffed.  
  
“No, but a reputation for cop-killing only makes every other job harder,” Raney said.  
  
“Who said anything about killing him?” Ophelia smiled. “Harkov kicked my client out of his own mines right after they uncovered a gigantic palladium deposit. Harkov said something about ‘geological hazards’ or something, but I’m betting that was just a ruse to let the feds claim the site for their own operation. If we kill Harkov, my client might get his operation back, sure, until the next fed comes along to kick him out. But if we grab him, maybe we can… negotiate. Maybe even get my client exclusive mining rights, while Harkov and the rest of the PDF look the other way.”  
  
“Sounds simple enough,” Raney mused. “Anything else we should know?”  
  
“That’s about it,” Ophelia shrugged. “We get paid as soon as my client gets the go-ahead to resume mining. That can be because Harkov came around, or because he’s no longer there to say no. He doesn’t care how we do it. We’re free to plan our own approach.”  
  
“I appreciate a client that doesn’t micromanage,” Kresnik grunted. “Before we keep going, I got a question. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but you look more than capable of handling this yourself. Why offer to cut us into the job?”  
  
“Why? Because Raney asked,” Ophelia winked. “I can’t say no to a pretty face.”  
  
“ _ Careful _ , Lia,” Raney teased.  
  
“I guess I could do this job myself, if I had to,” Ophelia continued. “But personally, I don’t mind splitting a take if it means having a guy waiting with a getaway car and a sniper watching my back.”  
  
“Fair enough,” Kresnik said.  
  
“Let’s talk about that take,” Raney chimed in. “What’s your client offering for this job?”  
  
“Fifty thousand Alliance credits,” Ophelia replied.  
  
“How are we gonna split 50k three ways?” Kresnik asked.  
  
“No, no,” Ophelia cut in. “My client’s offering fifty thousand credits. Each.”  
  
Kresnik and Raney exchanged glances. Kresnik whistled, long and low.  
  
“What can I say?” Ophelia grinned. “Palladium’s valuable. It goes in fuel cells, drive cores, phasic weapons, anti-gravity rings. The whole galaxy wants palladium. And whatever my client’s set aside for our payday is a drop in the bucket compared to the payday waiting for him underground. We just need to help him get back to it.”  
  
“Shit,” Raney mused, catching Kresnik’s eyes. “That’s not bad for a simple kidnapping.”  
  
“Not bad at all,” Kresnik grinned. “Let’s get to work.”  
  
~*~  
  
Nighttime over Redmond Hive. The trains were still running, and elevators still zipped up and down the citywide lift tubes like pulses of light along fiber-optic cable. But the airborne traffic going over the hive had slowed to a crawl, and the Spire became a shadow looming over the city, cast in the stark silver of Copperfel’s moon, high above.  
  
Nyx gazed thoughtfully up at the cloudless sky. She stood at the foot of one of the many bridges connecting the Spire with the mainland, halfway between the brilliant moonlight and the shadow of the canyon wall, her cloak flitting in the breeze.  
  
Maxwell emerged from the darkness behind her, his cane clicking on the pavement. He reached up and touched his cloak pin-- a silver snake coiled in a figure-eight. The serpent, Ouroboros, eating its own tail.  
  
“In this world, there is one truth from which all truths descend,” Maxwell intoned. “Knowledge is power. To seek power is to seek knowledge, and vice versa.”  
  
Maxwell lifted his gaze to the Spire rising above the city.  
  
“Somebody in this Spire knows the location of our target. Up there… somebody knows.”  
  
Maxwell turned, fixing Nyx with his cold, gray stare.  
  
“You will claim this knowledge for us. And in so doing, you shall claim us power.”  
  
Nyx bowed her head. “Yes, Professor.”  
  
The eyes of the engraved serpents on Maxwell’s cane began to glow with a sickly green light.  
  
“Consider this a test,” Maxwell said. “I will conceal your approach. The rest is up to you.”  
  
Maxwell tapped his cane against the ground. Arcane power surged around him, tendrils of emerald light racing into the ground and into the sky before fading away. An ominous wind began to blow through Redmond Hive. Maxwell turned and strode back into the darkness as mist began to rise from the river far below, and gloomy gray clouds rolled in to smother the moon…  
  
~*~  
  
A grapnel line punched into the landing pad from below, sending a hapless pigeon fleeing from its perch. Raney shot up the side of the Spire, flipping over the lip of the platform with practiced grace, and landed with a crouch. Her grapnel line zipped back into its gauntlet mounting with a whir. She dropped prone, and crawled to the inner edge of the platform, overlooking the Spire’s interior. Her camo-cloak shifted and blurred a dreary gray to match her surroundings, rendering her as little more than a lump on the landing pad, a bit of sensitive engineering equipment shrouded under a tarp. Raney unshipped her rifle and panned her scope across the opposite parking deck-- the one reserved for Spire employees.  
  
“This is Raney,” she muttered. “I’m in position.”  
  
“Alright,” Ophelia breathed. She was loitering on the edge of the parking deck, just an ordinary citizen having a smoke. Out of the corner of her eye, a pair of security mechs stood impassively by the bank of elevators leading into the Spire proper, their hands clasped formally behind their backs. On the far end of the parking deck, Kresnik was waiting, in a “borrowed” PDF skimmer.  
  
“Alright,” Ophelia echoed. “Let’s recap. We all have eyes on Harkov’s car. I tampered with his lock, so his keys won’t work. We’ll let him walk all the way up to his car so he’ll be as far away from the stairs as he can get before security comes running, Raney stuns him, I grab him, I stuff him in Kresnik’s skimmer and we get out. Got it?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, we got it,” Kresnik said, looking up at the sky. “Man, what is up with the weather tonight? An hour ago, it perfectly clear. Now, it looks like it’s about to rain.”  
  
“Rain’s not so bad,” Raney said. “It’s nice for sneaking around. Covers tracks. Muffles sound. This fog, though… not so much.”  
  
“Is that gonna be a problem?” Ophelia wondered.  
  
“‘Is that gonna be a problem’,” Raney scoffed. “Please. Switching to thermal scope.”  
  
Raney carefully removed her standard scope and slipped it into a belt pouch. She slid its replacement onto her rifle’s top rail and locked it into place. Instantly, it cut through the thick banks of mist rising up the Spire’s hollow interior and gathering like miniature clouds beneath the open-air parking deck ceilings. The world became awash with fuzzy greens and chilly blues.  
  
Something moved in the corner of Raney’s scope. A vague, midnight blue silhouette. So cold. Too cold to be human…  
  
“Eyes up,” Ophelia hissed over her comm. “Here he comes.”  
  
Harkov stepped out of the elevator with a weary sigh. For a desk sergeant who was more bureaucrat than police officer, he seemed rather haggard. He was a small man, his lean frame worn thin and gaunt by stress, with a patchy goatee and shadows under his eyes. He wore the burnt-orange fatigues of Copperfel Planetary Defense and a rust-red officer’s jacket with a high collar. He flashed his badge to one of the security mechs, let it scan him, and then shuffled out into the garage, his hands stuffed in his pockets.  
  
Raney tracked him through her scope, bright and warm beside the dull green security mechs beside him. The earlier flash of midnight-blue tugged at her senses. It could have been a mech, she reasoned. Some kind of security or engineering drone. But it didn’t move like a machine…  
  
Harkov trudged through the rolling fog rising up from the river below. He stopped beside his sky car, a compact skimmer in slate gray. He waved his key fob over the reader on the driver’s side door.  
  
It flashed red. Harkov blinked, and tried again, to no success.  
  
A shadow surged across the pavement and slammed him off his feet.  
  
A phasic bolt flashed against his car door, a split-second too late. Raney spat out a curse.  
  
“Raney?” Kresnik called, urgent.  
  
“There’s something down there,” Raney called. “Go, go!”  
  
Harkov hit the ground, all the wind forced from his lungs, but not before hitting the panic button on his keys. The silent alarm pulsed through the station, calling security to his aid.  
  
The two door drones rushed forward. Ophelia spun out from behind the column she was hiding behind, and beheaded one of the drones in a single clean slash. Its partner rounded on her, charging a stun bolt in its wrist-mounted phasers. Ophelia flicked her wrist, her sword flashed, and the second drone fell to join its partner on the pavement, its armored chassis neatly bisected from shoulder to hip.  
  
Harkov scrambled to his feet, darting aside just as Nyx’s claws tore a pair of ragged scratches into the side of his car. He coiled around a straight punch that smashed his car window, grabbed a fistful of Nyx’s hood and smacked her face-first into the door. She cried out, stunned, and Harkov ran.  
  
Lightning struck. A phasic bolt glanced across his thigh and locked up the muscles in his leg. Harkov went down hard, skinning his palms on the pavement. He staggered to his knees, clutching his cramping thigh.  
  
Up ahead, two security mechs came running to assist him. A police skimmer shot out of its parking space in reverse and crushed the two drones into the parked car behind.  
  
Harkov fell flat, forced down onto the pavement. Nyx appeared above him, her knee shoved into his back. She raised a hand, her claws glinting in the light.  
  
Raney took her shot.  
  
Nyx cried out and convulsed, shivering with azure lightning. Kresnik barreled down the lane. He threw the skimmer into a drift, hovering over Harkov prone on the floor and smashing Nyx off of him with the skimmer’s armored chassis. She tumbled across the pavement, skipping like a stone.  
  
Kresnik threw open the skimmer’s hull and tried to grab Harkov off the ground. Harkov rolled underneath the police skimmer, drawing his service pistol and firing. Searing red lasbolts cut into the skimmer’s soft underbelly, melting and scoring the skimmer’s anti-gravity ring.  
  
He staggered to his feet on the opposite side of the skimmer, the feeling returning to his wounded leg. Kresnik stood up, drawing his pistol, but the damaged skimmer lurched under his weight and he toppled over the side, hitting the pavement with a thud. He pushed himself to his feet with a scowl, taking aim.  
  
Harkov took off down the deck as fast as he could. Phasic bolts flashed by him, missing him by hairs, exploding into coruscating electricity against the parked PDF cruisers. The crackling bolts are joined by the throaty roar of Kresnik’s pistol rounds, powerful enough to gouge holes in the far wall.  
  
Ophelia lunged out from behind a concrete column, but a burst of lasfire drove her back into cover with a yelp. Up ahead, there was a chime, and the elevator doors opened up. A squad of security mechs fanned out into the garage, parting down the middle so Harkov had space to run past.  
  
Ophelia grit her teeth, violet light pulsing between her fingers. Her sword flashed through the air.  
  
Harkov looked over his shoulder with a gasp.  
  
A crescent of dark magic sliced overhead, cleaved the squad of security mechs in half at waist-height and gouged a huge slash into the elevator itself. A second later, a shockwave hurled the bisected mechs off their feet and crumpled the elevator doors like tinfoil.  
  
Harkov threw himself into a roll, the wave of dark magic coursing overhead. The shockwave threw him against the wall, knocking the wind from his lungs. But he still staggered, wheezing, to his feet, took one look at the sparking, jammed elevator, and disappeared down the stairs.  
  
Ophelia huffed in disbelief, at once impressed and irritated by his tenacity-- only for a shadow to land on her shoulders. Nyx, leaping from car roof to car roof, landed on Ophelia’s shoulders and kicked off of her chest, launching herself forward in a pounce.  
  
“Hey!” Ophelia called, indignant, as Nyx vanished down the stairwell, hot on Harkov’s heels.  
  
“Who the hell was that?” Kresnik cried.  
  
“Not a clue,” Ophelia said.  
  
Shots spanked off the walls around them, and pushed them into cover behind a pair of concrete pillars. More security mechs were converging on their location, from other security stations on this level as well as coming up from below.  
  
A grapnel line punched into the rafters and Raney came swinging in, quickly ducking behind the armored chassis of a parked police skimmer. She ejected her phasic magazine and slotted in a las cell, slapping the toggle from single shot to full auto.  
  
“I’ll keep our exit clear!” she cried. “Don’t let him get away!”  
  
Harkov raced down the steps, Nyx close behind, Nyx leaping from landing to landing rather than taking the steps one at a time. He burst out into the PDF Garrison, alarms blaring, troops and security mechs scurrying past. The station was rousing from its slumber, bringing heavier weapons to bear.  
  
Harkov turned a corner, and bolted down the adjoining hallway. He heard the sharp, firecracker pop of laser weapons on full auto, mingling with the booming roar of a high caliber hand cannon and singing crescents of dark magic. He stopped in the open door of his office, breathless and wheezing.  
  
He seized, gasping, as a bone spear punched through his shoulder. He let out a haggard breath, falling to one knee. He turned, slowly, painfully, to face his assailant.  
  
Nyx loomed before him, hooded and inscrutable.  
  
Harkov gritted his teeth, a stubborn determination brewing in his veins. He reached up, taking Nyx’s tail in both hands.  
  
For all her inhuman strength and speed, Nyx still only weighed about as much as a human child-- and Harkov, rather than try to pull the blade from his back, leveraged Nyx into a swing and hurled her onto his desk with all his might.  
  
Nyx cried out, astonished, as Harkov’s work desk exploded into kindling under her weight. The impact dislodged her tail blade from Harkov’s back and he sagged to his knees, dizzy with pain, his left arm falling limp at his side.  
  
Nyx seethed. She flexed her arms, two dagger-like pairs of sharpened bone spurs extending from her knuckles.  
  
Harkov’s pistol flew from his hands, two gouges cut in the metal frame. Nyx snarled, her spurs plunging towards Harkov’s throat…  
  
Light, pure and blinding, forced her away.  
  
Nyx shrieked in pain and shrank away from the brilliance, her cloak singed and smouldering with wisps of white fire. Harkov stared her down, rings of shining white sigils orbiting around his wrists. He keyed his office door shut behind him, and a magic sigil shone into being across its surface.  
  
Nyx was trapped. She snarled, lunging for the door. A pillar of white fire erupted from Harkov’s palm and slapped her to the ground, burning. She screeched and fled from the flames, scurrying on all fours like an insect. She curled up in the corner, cowering, hugging her knees to her chest.  
  
Harkov relented. He lowered his hand, the white light fading from his fingertips, the flames receding for the moment. His fire was the only light in the room, and Nyx sat, cast in stark contrast, caught between shadow and flame. He stared at her piteous form, furrowing his brow.  
  
“Who are you, child?” he asked. “Who sent you?”  
  
Nyx grit her teeth. “My _ teacher _ !”  
  
She pounced, claws and spurs bared. A wave of brilliant white fire slapped her out of the air.  
  
The beam slapped her against the wall and pinned her in place, the hungry flames searing across her flesh. Nyx screamed and wept, sounding so much like any other child, but Harkov didn’t falter. Nyx gritted her teeth, mustering the last of her strength. Shrieking in desperation, she launched herself off the wall, dove through the air--  
  
\--and tore open Harkov’s throat with a lash of her tail.  
  
Harkov’s white fire died on his fingertips and fizzled to nothing. He clutched at his throat, reflexively, uselessly, before falling to the ground in a crumpled heap. The arcane sigil on the door, and the ribbons of holy script lining the walls, sizzled and dripped like molten silver.  
  
Nyx sank to her knees. She spent a long moment catching her breath, studying her tattered cloak, her arms and spurs, blackened with soot, the moon-pale light flowing through her veins as her scorched flesh slowly mended and became whole.  
  
As the light faded, the shadows grew deeper. The shadow in the center of the room rippled, like a pebble tossed into a lake.  
  
Maxwell emerged from the shifting, churning darkness. He glanced from Nyx’s battered, exhausted form to Harkov, limp and on death’s door.  
  
“Hmph,” Maxwell sniffed, in mild approval. “A fine test. Though, I’m tempted to say points off for slitting his throat, dear. We came here seeking information, after all.”  
  
Maxwell stood over Harkov’s ruined form, and lifted open his jacket with the tip of his cane. There was a metal clink of something against the tile floor. Maxwell hooked it on the end of his cane, flipped it up, and caught it.  
  
A crescent, orb, and three diamonds. The crest of the Order.  
  
Maxwell’s lips curled into a smile.  
  
“No matter,” Maxwell said. “There are other ways to make someone talk.”  
  
He turned. Nyx was kneeling over Harkov’s body. She had pulled something out from under her collar-- a simple bead necklace. Her expression was inscrutable as always.  
  
“What are you doing?” Maxwell asked.  
  
“Honoring him,” Nyx said quietly. “He was a formidable foe.”  
  
Maxwell chuckled, bemused. “And how exactly are you doing that?”  
  
Nyx ignored his patronizing. She pinched a bead on her necklace between two fingers. As the last bit of color drained from Harkov’s face, the clear glass bead began to shine with an eerie, milky-white light.  
  
“I am binding him to me,” Nyx said, reverent. “He will never be alone.”  
  
The door exploded, smashed apart by Kresnik’s armored shoulder.  
  
“Hey!” he cried.  
  
He snapped his pistol up and fired, but Maxwell threw his cloak around Nyx and they disappeared, Kresnik’s shots passing through them like smoke. Kresnik scowled and shoved his pistol back in its holster.  
  
Ophelia staggered up to the office, clicking her sword back in its sheath. The corridor behind her looked like a warzone. Harkov’s office looked even worse-- like a bomb had gone off. And there, on the floor, was Harkov himself, his throat slit so gruesomely it damn near chopped his head off.  
  
“Aw, shit,” Ophelia muttered bluntly.  
  
“I’ll say,” Kresnik grunted. “What the hell just happened?”  
  
~*~  
  
_ Darkness, flowing like water. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ He drifts, bodiless, through the void, a wisp of smoke in human shape. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ The walls are wrong. This is all wrong. He knows this, in his core, somewhere deep and dark and timeless. He shouldn’t be here. There should be a river. A road. A gray shore lined with trees. A woman in black, with an ankh around her neck and a snake up her sleeve. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ But there is nothing here. No river. No road. No end. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ Nothing but gray, gray, gray. Except that’s not true. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ The girl is here, too. She floats in the stillness, curled up like a child, hugging her knees to her chest. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ Though he has no voice with which to speak, and no mouth with which to speak it, somehow, his words ring out clearly. _ _  
_ _  
_ ** _What have you done to me?_ ** _ He demands. _ ** _You’ve imprisoned me._ ** _  
_ _  
_ _ She lifts her head and looks at him, nothing more than a silhouette filled with smoke, quivering like a candle in a stiff breeze. There is an eternity of sadness in her tired eyes. _ _  
_ _  
_ ** _Your body imprisoned you,_ ** _ she whispers. _ ** _I set you free._ ** ** _  
_ ** ** _  
_ ** _ The man shakes the head he doesn’t have anymore. Already, he feels his anger dimming, draining away to make room for resignation. Curiosity. Insight. After a moment’s consideration, the old occult lore bubbles to the forefront of his memory-- and he realizes now that he is nothing _ ** _but_ ** _ memory, here in this bodiless place. _ _  
_ _  
_ ** _You are one who steals from Death, _ ** _ he says softly. No anger, no accusation. Only a theory. _ ** _A Priestess of Despair._ ** ** _  
_ ** ** _  
_ ** ** _We are family now, you and I, _ ** _ she says, reverent. _ ** _You will never be alone._ **  
  
~*~  
  
Beyond the shadowed world of astral space, back in reality Nyx was sitting on the carpeted floor of a cheap motel room, Redmond Hive’s harsh sunlight trickling through the blinds and painting golden stripes across her face. Her eyes were fixed forward in a blank stare, their usual amber clouded milky-white to match the glass bead around her neck. Gray swirled within the bead like mist, and every so often, one could almost make out something in the smoke-- like a face in the fog, or a hand against the glass.  
  
Maxwell’s cane cracked against her horns. She flinched, slipping out of her trance.  
  
“Child,” Maxsell said sternly. “Were you listening to me?”  
  
Nyx looked down. “...No, Professor.”  
  
“Do pay attention, child. That’s a terrible habit.” Maxwell sighed, clapping his cane against his palm. He gestured to their room’s meager work desk, where his comm, a dataslate, and the Order crest taken from Harkov’s body were all linked by a number of wires.  
  
“As I was saying,” Maxwell lectured, haughty. “A cursory examination of this crest’s data store has uncovered two things. The first, that Ivan Harkov of Copperfel Planetary Defense is more accurately Agent Ivan Harkov, Order Intelligence. The second, that the Order saw fit to embed one of their operatives in the capacity of overseeing local mining rights. Now, I believe that Agent Harkov had valuable information about what I seek… knowledge is power, after all. But that, my dear, is where we run into a problem.”  
  
Maxwell tapped his cane against the desk. Reams of incomprehensible code streamed down his dataslate-- a crude, incredibly inefficient attempt at brute-forcing Order encryption.  
  
“Now, I find no shame in admitting that modern technology eludes me,” Maxwell continued. “Knowledge is power. But one need not know all things; it is enough to have access to those who do. I have a number of contacts capable of cracking Order encryption. But should we gain Agent Harkov’s clearance, I suspect the data I seek would not be stored on his badge, but on his personal terminal, and, assuming that it was not destroyed in the attack, would still require us to infiltrate the Spire yet again.”  
  
Maxwell sighed, and shook his head. He fixed Nyx with his cold gray stare.  
  
“Ultimately, this is no more than a nuisance. I will find what I seek,” Maxwell declared. “However, such a costly detour is… disappointing. Ideally, I would have liked to simply ask Harkov for the information I seek, or, failing that, pull his secrets from his mind directly. Such a task is more within my purview than firewalls and encryption. But you took away that option, didn’t you?”  
  
Nyx squirmed. “...Yes, Professor.”  
  
“A pity,” Maxwell sniffed. “You performed well. But, clearly, there is room for improvement.”  
  
Maxwell clapped his cane against his hands.  
  
“Such. A. Shame.”  
  
Nyx winced at every slap of Maxwell’s cane against the palm of his hand. He studied her impassively, and she shrank under the weight of his disapproving stare. After a long moment, Maxwell turned back to his desk, and Nyx let out a trembling breath.  
  
“Well, then,” Maxwell said, disconnecting his comm from Harkov’s badge. “I suppose I should place a call to a more technologically-minded associate--”  
  
“Wait,” Nyx cut in. “I can help.”  
  
Maxwell smiled, patronizing. “Can you, now?”  
  
“Yes,” Nyx insisted. “This man… his ghost is bound to me now. His mind is my mind.”  
  
Maxwell paused. He set his comm down, and turned, intrigued. “...Is that so?”  
  
“Yes, yes!” Nyx nodded vigorously. She pinched the shining bead around her neck, the one containing Harkov’s soul. “He is with me. Maybe I can talk to him for you?”  
  
Maxwell smiled. He reached down, placing a hand on Nyx’s head in almost fatherly manner.  
  
Then he pulled her hood back and grasped the crown of her head, his fingertips shining with a sickly green light…  
  
“I’ll ask him myself,” Maxwell said. “Then we shall consider our next move.”  
  
Nyx hissed, clutching at Maxwell’s arm. Her amber eyes flicked milky-white for a moment, before being stained a poisonous green. She snarled and thrashed, her tail swishing in agitation, but Maxwell’s grip remained firm.  
  
“Be still,” Maxwell said. “This will only take a moment…”  
  
~*~  
  
“Would you stop squirming? You’re making me nervous.”  
  
“You’re one to talk,” Raney muttered. While she was admittedly drumming her fingernails against her glass, Kresnik was tapping his foot so hard he was shaking the table.  
  
“I’m just trying to stay positive,” Kresnik grumbled.  
  
“If it were up to me, we’d be off this rock,” Raney muttered.  
  
“Oh, you’re just gonna bail and leave your pal Lia to twist, is that it?”  
  
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Raney snapped. “I’m just saying we need to be ready to leave as soon as possible…”  
  
The door slid open. Kresnik and Raney had their sidearms drawn in an instant.  
  
“Whoa, whoa!” Ophelia yelped. “Keep it in your pants, guys…”  
  
“Sorry,” Kresnik grumbled, holstering his pistol. “Just a little antsy.”  
  
“How was your meeting with Mr. Anonymous Mining Exec?” Raney asked flatly.  
  
Ophelia blew out a troubled sigh. “Well… I’ve got some bad news, and some worse news.”  
  
“Oh, here we go,” Kresnik muttered.  
  
“Bad news first: we’re not getting paid.”  
  
There was a general groaning.  
  
“Saw that coming,” Raney sighed.  
  
“It gets worse,” Ophelia said grimly. “Look at this.”  
  
Ophelia clicked open her comm and set it on the table. A holographic display of the Hunter’s Association network shimmered into being above the table. Ophelia reached into the display and scrolled up the list, to three of the network’s newest alerts: Kresnik, Raney, and Ophelia, wanted dead or alive.  
  
“...Shit,” Raney said softly.  
  
“What the fuck!” Kresnik roared. “A kill/capture order? Are they serious? Just for busting up a couple of security mechs on the fucking graveyard shift?”  
  
“We _ did _ give them a hell of a repair bill…” Raney sighed, running a hand through her hair.  
  
“There was also the attempted kidnapping and impromptu assassination,” Ophelia winced.  
  
“Damn it!” Kresnik growled, pounding a fist into the table. “See? _ This _ is why I hate off-network jobs!”  
  
“Oh, sure, because your stint with The Exchange went over _ so _ well,” Raney drawled.  
  
“At least mafia jobs are closer to Association-standard than this amateur-hour horseshit!” Kresnik groaned. “Son of a bitch. Alright, let’s pack it up and head back to the Dragonfly. Ophelia, you need a ride? We’re getting off this rock.”  
  
“No complaints here,” Ophelia said.  
  
They strode out of their private booth, making their way to the door-- only for half a dozen armed men to be waiting for them in front of the bar. No identifying insignia. Salvaged or patchwork armor. Weapons far heavier than those allowed on the civilian market.  
  
Hunters. Just like them.  
  
“Y’know, it’s funny,” their leader said, tapping at his comm while his fellows kept their weapons trained on the trio. He was fresh-faced, unscarred, practically half Kresnik’s age. He held up his comm, lining up the trio with their mugshots in the Association database. “You three… look _ just _ like these guys.”  
  
“We get that a lot,” Ophelia said dryly.  
  
“Easy, junior,” Kresnik muttered. “Let’s not do anything stupid.”  
  
“You’re the one doing that,” the younger hunter said, insufferably smug. “Your alert was posted to the network six hours ago, and yet here you are, in the very same city, kicking back and having a drink.”  
  
“Says the kid about to start a shootout in a public bar, surrounded by civilians, in broad daylight,” Raney drawled.  
  
“Yeah, about that…”  
  
The hunter nodded. To a man, every other patron in the bar who hadn’t already conveniently fled drew hidden weapons and put the trio in their sights. The trio, already outnumbered, were suddenly staring down the barrels of a baker’s dozen guns.  
  
“I brought some volunteers,” the cocky young hunter grinned. “It’s five to one, big guy. How do you like your odds?”  
  
Kresnik scowled. Raney and Ophelia exchanged glances.  
  
“Um, excuse me?”  
  
Something tapped against the young hunter’s shoulder armor. He paused, and looked over his shoulder, bewildered. There was an old man behind him, with a grandfatherly smile and a dove-gray three-piece suit, tapping on his shoulder with an engraved cane.  
  
“That’s--” Ophelia hissed.  
  
“Wait,” Kresnik whispered.  
  
“Could I-- Could I see that, young man?” Maxwell asked.  
  
The young hunter blinked, and handed Maxwell his comm. Maxwell scrolled through a few screens of the Hunter’s Association database, down lists and lists of wanted men. He gasped in recognition, tapping the file. His own holographic portrait appeared, slowly rotating above the palm of his hand.  
  
“You look like an enterprising bunch,” Maxwell smiled, casually tossing the comm back into the hunter’s hands. “I thought it would be only fair to inform you all that I, too, have a sizable bounty on my head, lest the opportunity elude you. In fact--”  
  
Maxwell hopped up onto a nearby table, kicking a beer onto some poor mercenary’s lap.  
  
“In fact, I shall give you all the chance to claim the price on my head,” Maxwell said, raising his cane with a flourish. “In fact, because I am in such a sporting mood, I’ll even let you all take the first shot. Are you ready? Come on, everyone! Three… two…”  
  
“You’re crazy, old man,” the young hunter sneered.  
  
The snakes on Maxwell’s cane shone with a filthy green light. Maxwell smiled.  
  
“...one.”  
  
Maxwell’s cane struck the table, and every light went out.  
  
Darkness, thick and unnatural, flooded into the room. The air filled with the sound of roaring wind, shrieking metal, snapping bone. Mercenaries fired blindly into the dark, but the muzzle flashes of automatic weapons, the neon brightness of las- and phasic bolts, all were smothered in the torrent of artificial night.  
  
Maxwell lifted his cane, and the lights hesitantly flickered back on, as if wondering if it was safe to return.  
  
Husks littered the floor. Empty suits of patchwork armor, trailing black smoke and desiccated sand.  
  
Kresnik, Raney and Ophelia took in the sight, aghast. Maxwell hopped off the table he was standing on, lifted his gaze towards them, and smiled. Their weapons snapped towards him.  
  
Maxwell waved his cane, a toxic green light engulfing their weapons. Kresnik and Raney’s pistol triggers clicked uselessly; Ophelia’s sword fought her grip, staying locked in its sheath.  
  
“There’ll be no need for that,” Maxwell said, impassive.  
  
“Who are you? What do you want?” Kresnik demanded.  
  
“Call me Maxwell,” he declared. “Our paths crossed last night. Quite by accident, I assure you. I understand I may have cost you quite a bit of money. I am here to offer recompense. In fact, I am here to offer you a job.”  
  
The trio exchanged glances. Kresnik frowned.  
  
“What kind of job?”  
  
~*~  
  
They soared above Copperfel’s flat, rust-red plateaus, the landscape whipping past the windows. Maxwell sat, his legs crossed, his cane flat across his lap. Nyx sat apart, hugging her knees to her chest, wrapped in her tail. As always, she was gloomy and inscrutable.  
  
But that didn’t stop people from trying to get into her head. Raney peered at Nyx from across the aisle, her curiosity getting the better of her, trying to glean some sort of meaning from Nyx’s blank, distant expression. But Nyx didn’t say a word; she merely clutched the glass beads around her neck and stared into the wall in front of her, as if in a trance.  
  
Ophelia bumped an elbow against Raney’s. “What, you thinking you might adopt?”  
  
“Ellie and I haven’t had that talk yet,” Raney rolled her eyes. “I was just thinking.”  
  
“She’s just a kid,” Ophelia said. “And she still gave our target the fight of his life.”  
  
“This is the one who beat us to the punch, huh?” Raney mused. “She looks… blue.”  
  
Ophelia punched Raney in the shoulder, teasing. “Racist. You’ve never seen a super with blue skin before?”  
  
“I meant she looks _ depressed _ ,” Raney huffed. She tapped her chin, thinking, before looking through her belt pouches.  
  
“Hey. Hey, kid. Are you hungry?”  
  
Ophelia raised a dubious eyebrow. “You’re really gonna be that stranger offering candy to a little kid?”  
  
“Shut _ up _ , Lia,” Raney groaned. “Hey. Hey, kid.”  
  
Nyx blinked, her eyes flickering from milky-white back to their usual amber. She turned to see Raney reaching across the aisle, offering her a ration bar wrapped in foil. Nyx took the offered bar, furrowing her brow. This time, she stopped short of simply biting into the foil, instead taking the time to carefully slit open the foil with a claw.  
  
Nyx took a wary bite. It wasn’t the sweetest ration bar in the world. But compared to the all-nutrition, no-flavor bar that she’d had the other day, it was an _ experience _ . Nyx squealed in surprise and what might have even been delight, smiling around a mouthful of granola, dried cherries and dark chocolate.  
  
Raney grinned, proud to have managed to coax a smile from this gloomy girl. But as Nyx turned to her, she caught a glimpse of dark marks under her hood-- sooty, scorched marks on her forehead. Raney’s smile faltered, eyes flitting suspiciously between Nyx and Maxwell, her supposed guardian.  
  
“Hey,” Raney said gently. “Are you okay, sweetie? You haven’t said a word since we met.”  
  
Nyx looked pensive. She slowly finished her granola bar, chewing thoughtfully. Even when she was done eating, she kept her brows furrowed in thought, as if searching for the words. It was a long moment before she found her answer.  
  
“...I pity you,” Nyx said softly. “You use words to know each other. But inside, you are… alone.”  
  
Raney and Ophelia exchanged glances. Neither of them knew what to say to that.  
  
Kresnik’s ship, the Dragonfly, shot across Copperfel’s sky. It was a cargo hauler that earned its namesake from the six folding S-foils that extended back from its bridge section like the wings of a dragonfly. When open, they revealed the clamps that allowed the Dragonfly to dock with and tow massive cargo pods across interstellar space, and, from the front, gave the Dragonfly the silhouette of a six-pointed star. The S-foils also served as radiators, bleeding off excess heat from the Dragonfly’s engines, which were robust and powerful enough to provide a respectable amount of thrust even when at maximum cargo capacity.  
  
With a few after-market adjustments, Kresnik had modified the Dragonfly to fly with its S-foils open even when it had no cargo pods loaded. With the S-foils extended to bleed off the excess heat, Kresnik was free to fire the Dragonfly’s engines at full power-- turning a humble cargo hauler into a cutter to rival even the sleekest racing ship. That impressive engine power was what allowed them to fly headfirst into Copperfel’s dreaded winds, turbulence be damned.  
  
In the distance, the vast plains of Copperfel made way for a scar-- a vast canyon, carved out of the plateau by centuries of diverted rainfall. While the magrails linking Copperfel’s hive cities mostly ran underground to take shelter from Copperfel’s relentless winds, there were gaps were the tracks were exposed, vulnerable. This was one such gap, and it was where they would lay their trap: Dead Man’s Drop.  
  
“Coming up on the drop site,” Kresnik shouted over his shoulder. “Y’all ready to go back there?”  
  
“Ready,” Raney replied.  
  
“Ready!” Ophelia called.  
  
“Ready,” Nyx murmured, a whisper beside them.  
  
Maxwell put a hand on Nyx’s shoulder, and she flinched.  
  
“To reiterate: I seek a very specific package being delivered on this train. My apprentice will know it when she sees it,” Maxwell explained. “Deliver this package to me, and you are welcome to keep any and all other cargo aboard.”  
  
“Train’s coming in twenty minutes,” Kresnik nodded. “Let’s get this done.”  
  
After racing across the plains and fighting the wind at every step, Dead Man’s Drop was shockingly quiet and still. Kresnik cut the thrusters and pulled the Dragonfly in under the huge arches of the magrail bridging the canyon. With charges set at either end of the bridge, Kresnik maneuvered the Dragonfly so it was sitting right in the middle.  
  
Raney popped the Dragonfly’s top hatch and clambered nimbly onto the ship’s roof, pulling Ophelia up after her.  
  
Nyx scurried onto the roof, gazing up at the bridge overhead. She crouched like a frog, coiled her legs beneath her and pounced, launching herself up in a superhuman leap. Her claws found purchase in the skeletal metal framework of the bridge, and she held fast, clinging to the underbelly of the bridge like a bat. Raney and Ophelia joined her a moment later, zipping up a grapnel line, Ophelia clinging to Raney for dear life.  
  
“Oh, I am _ not _ comfortable with heights,” Ophelia shuddered.  
  
“Keep it together, Lia,” Raney said. “Payday’s coming.”  
  
_ “Two minutes,” _ Kresnik’s voice crackled over the comm. _ “I’m gonna get the ship out of sight. Good luck.” _ _  
_  
The Dragonfly slipped over the lip of the plateau above, leaving the trio alone on the bridge’s skeletal girders, their target two minutes away.  
  
The bridge began to shake, suffused with the energized hum of the magrail above.  
  
“Right on time,” Raney said, blowing out a breath. She tapped at the dataslate embedded in her bracer, turning towards the far side of the bridge.  
  
“Charges armed,” Raney announced. “Detonating one.”  
  
The far side of the bridge erupted into flames and filthy black smoke, the shockwave making Ophelia wobble precariously on her perch. One of the bridge’s support columns crumpled like tinfoil and fell into the valley below, up in flames.  
  
The rumbling grew more intense. Raney tapped at her bracer, turning towards the near side of the bridge and the tunnel the train was coming down.  
  
“One confirmed,” Raney reported. “Detonating two.”  
  
Raney kept her eyes on the tunnel, waiting, waiting. She could see the train approaching. Closer. Closer…  
  
Shivering bolts of azure lightning exploded across the track, the huge surge of electricity demagnetizing the rail. The train slammed down onto the no-longer-frictionless rail, sparks flying. The train scraped itself to a precarious halt over the hole the first charge had blown in the track, the lead car half-tipped over the edge. The train went still, smoke weeping from its chassis.  
  
“Two confirmed!” Raney cried. “Go, go!”  
  
Raney fired a grapnel line into the bridge and swung herself and Ophelia up onto the roof of the train, Nyx scurrying at their heels. Ophelia cut a panel out of the roof and dropped down.  
  
A squad of bewildered security mechs swiveled at the commotion, raising their weapons. Ophelia flicked her wrist, and a deep violet shockwave smashed the mechs off their feet. A hoverdrone re-lit its drives and rose from the tangle of crumpled limbs, bringing its mounted rifle to bear.  
  
A grapnel line punched into its chassis. Raney yanked, and the drone flew over her head-- only to be sliced apart in a scissoring cut of Nyx’s bone spurs.  
  
“Alright, kiddo, which way?” Ophelia called.  
  
Nyx’s amber eyes flicked into white. She sniffed the air, her necklace shining.  
  
“Towards the lead car,” Nyx called. “This way!”  
  
A sticky charge blew open the door to the next compartment. Ophelia led the way forward, pistol in one hand, sword in the other. She kept low and wide, bounding forward while Raney shot over her shoulders. Nyx trailed behind them, searching, searching, her eyes shimmering a ghostly white.  
  
One car cleared, then another, then another. Ophelia’s cursed sword cut out a door lock and she kicked the hatch open, bashing a security mech in the face. Raney toggled her rifle to full auto and hosed the compartment with a blistering hail of fire. Nyx prowled in their wake, sniffing at the air, the ground, following whispers only she could hear.  
  
Nyx gasped. Behind her, Ophelia beheaded a kneeling security mech with a flash of her sword, before turning to cut open the way to the next compartment.  
  
Nyx darted out, grabbing her hand. She stepped forward, extending a single sharpened claw and stabbing it into the lock. She twisted and turned, brow furrowed in concentration, until--  
  
Click. The hatch slid open without a fuss.  
  
A pair of security mechs leveled their weapons. Nyx punched her spurs into their chests and tore out their torsos, sparking circuitry trailing like entrails.  
  
This train compartment was stacked floor to ceiling with pallets containing a small fortune in raw ore. But atop the crates, there was a simple, innocuous briefcase, one which pulsed in Nyx’s hands as if it were alive.  
  
Nyx exhaled, clutching the case to her chest.  
  
“This is it.”  
  
There was a horrid metal lurch, and the compartment shifted under their feet. Raney ran down to the end of the compartment and peeked out through the hatch. Her eyes went wide.  
  
Her handmade demolition charge was meant to blow a hole in the bridge and make it so the train, once it managed to restore power, wouldn’t be able to simply escape back into the tunnel-- or, worse, trap them all inside of it. But the charge was too powerful for its own good, and the bridge was beginning to collapse…  
  
“We’re sliding off the rail!” Raney called. “I have to release this car from the lead!”  
  
“Do it!” Ophelia called back. “I’ll hold you steady!”  
  
Raney fired a grapnel line to the top of the car, already an unsettling steep grade above her. Ophelia clicked the line onto her belt, and flashed Raney a thumbs up. Raney nodded.  
  
Raney opened the hatch, and dropped down so she was standing on top of the falling lead car. The pin connecting the train cars together stood in front of her, a thick, sturdy mechanism. Dauntingly robust, but still nothing a sticky charge couldn’t cut through. Good thing she still had one left. Raney pulled the charge out of her belt pouch, syncing the detonator to her bracer.  
  
There was a metallic crunch above her. The car lurched to the side-- a cargo pallet slid out of place and crashed against the hatch, only stopped because it was too large to fall through.  
  
Raney cried out in alarm. She was yanked to the side, the sticky charge falling from her fingers. Her eyes flitted between the charge, falling into the abyss below, and the cargo pallet above her, pinning her grapnel line and blocking her way back inside.  
  
Raney kicked her feet. The pallet had shortened her line, and she was hanging dangerously above the falling lead car. She flexed her wrist, and ejected her grapnel line.  
  
_ “Raney?!” _ Ophelia cried, feeling her line go slack.  
  
Raney dropped onto the door to the next car, hanging completely vertical now, staring down the thick metal pin holding her car to the one above.  
  
“I’m okay,” Raney said. She grit her teeth and toggled her rifle to maximum power, single shot.  
  
The charged lasbolt, strong enough to instantly vaporize the torso of any unarmored biological target, gouged a molten hemisphere into the train car’s connector pin. She fired once, twice, three times--  
  
The lead cars fell away with a bang, their silhouettes vanishing into the canyon below. For one awful moment, Raney fell along with them-- until she raised her gauntlets and fired a pair of grapnel lines into the car above. The lines pulled taut, pain speared through her shoulders-- but the cables held steady.  
  
_ “Raney!” _ Ophelia shrieked.  
  
“I’m okay,” Raney panted, sweat trickling down her brow. “I’m okay! Cut the second pin!”  
  
“Okay,” Ophelia breathed. She opened the hatch.  
  
There was a tortured squeal of metal high above, and their car slipped further off the track. Gravity slammed the hatch shut and Ophelia fell, the handle breaking off in her grip.  
  
Nyx’s tail wrapped tight around her waist. Nyx punched her spurs into the now-vertical floor of the train car, fighting to find purchase with her claws.  
  
Ophelia fell, momentum pulling her out of Nyx’s grip. Nyx’s tail unfurled, and Ophelia grabbed on with both hands, eliciting a pained squeal from Nyx. Ophelia hung from Nyx’s tail, blood weeping from her palms as her grip began slipping down onto the blade.  
  
Nyx struggled to hold on, even as she felt like she was being torn in two. Her hood fell open, and Ophelia saw her struggling, saw her gritting her teeth, sweat pouring down her brow.  
  
“I’m too heavy for you!” Ophelia called out. “I’m going to let go!”  
  
“No! Don’t!” Nyx choked out.  
  
“I’m hurting you!” Ophelia protested. “I’ll be fine! I’ll just land in those boxes!”  
  
Another screech of metal above. Another jarring lurch as they slid further off the track.  
  
“I can’t cut the pin,” Nyx gasped. “It has to be you. Be ready!”  
  
Ophelia swallowed hard. “...Alright. Give me your best shot!”  
  
An aura of smoky violet light suffused Nyx’s form. She grit her teeth, mustered her strength--  
  
\--and launched Ophelia into the air with a whip of her tail.  
  
Ophelia burst through the hatch door. Her sword flashed in her hands.  
  
The connector pin split cleanly down the middle, the shorn surfaces glistening with violet light.  
  
Cut free, the train car fell into the valley. For one surreal moment, Nyx felt like she was floating.  
  
The Dragonfly swooped in, articulated loading arms hanging like insect legs beneath its hull. They clamped down around the train car, a stranger cargo pod than the ones it was used to, sealing into place with magnetic clamps.  
  
Kresnik leveled the ship out, jostling the cargo within the car. Ophelia shoved the dislodged pallet away from the open hatch, Nyx hoisted Raney through the door, and Kresnik gunned the Dragonfly’s engines, shooting them towards the horizon.  
  
~*~  
  
Maxwell conjured the girls out of the train car and into the Dragonfly proper. They emerged from a pool of swirling black smoke. As soon as they were safely aboard, Ophelia threw her arms around Raney’s neck.  
  
“Don’t _ scare _ me like that, you asshole!” Ophelia wailed.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Raney said. She gave Ophelia a squeeze and immediately regretted it, pain flaring in her shoulders. She cringed, sinking into her seat, wrapping her arms around herself.  
  
“You okay?” Ophelia asked.  
  
“Ow. Fuck. I think I pulled something in my arms,” Raney hissed. She shook her head. “But forget about that. We did it. Holy shit, we did it!”  
  
“Damn right, we did!” Ophelia went for a high five, only to leave Raney wincing again.  
  
Nyx lurked behind them, watching them, as if unsure whether to speak. They saw her waiting, and turned to her, beaming.  
  
“We did it, girl!” Ophelia grinned. “You did great!”  
  
“Now _ that _ is how we do it!” Kresnik grinned, pounding a fist against his chestplate. “Great work, guys. Especially you, kiddo.”  
  
It was strange having so much attention. Nyx blinked, puzzled.  
  
“Unclear…” she murmured, though she couldn’t help but smile.  
  
Maxwell cleared his throat. Nyx turned to him, her smile fading.  
  
“The package, dear?” he asked coldly.  
  
Nyx glanced down at the case in her arms, clutched to her chest like a child. She handed it over.  
  
Maxwell opened the case. Inside was an artifact-- an ornate silver ring, pointed around its circumference to form an eight-pointed star, with one point extended to form a dagger. Within the ring, there was a rod that might have served as the dagger’s hilt, except this connecting bar was made of crystal, in a vivid emerald green.  
  
The Rift Needle. Or, more accurately, _ a _ Rift Needle. Maxwell had heard the tales of course, had seen their broken pieces on display or being studied in the halls of the Circle.  
  
To think, the Order had discovered one intact, without even beginning to fathom the treasure they had unearthed.  
  
“Hey,” Kresnik called into the passenger section. “Just out of curiosity, how full was the train car we picked up?”  
  
“Really full,” Ophelia replied. “Stacked floor to ceiling with crates.”  
  
“Oh man,” Kresnik grinned, eager. “What do you say we find a safe place to land and check out _ exactly _ what we got?”  
  
Maxwell lifted the Rift Needle out of its case. It pulsed at his touch, shimmering green in his hands.  
  
“Yes,” Maxwell smiled. “Let’s.”  
  
~*~  
  
Fetid green light flashed across the sky. The Dragonfly appeared with a thunderclap, abruptly jolting out of nothing and plummeting to earth. It crunched through the treeline, the canopy nicking and scraping at its hull. It smashed through a clearing, wreathed in broken foliage and splintered wood, and finally slid to a halt. It came to rest against a stand of trees, a broad furrow of tilled earth carved out in its wake.  
  
Maxwell appeared in a wisp of black smoke, ushering Nyx along behind. The Dragonfly’s hatches hissed open, and a battered Kresnik marched after them, flanked by Raney and Ophelia.  
  
“Hey,” Kresnik demanded. “Hey!”  
  
“You have your payment, Mr. Kresnik,” Maxwell said briskly, without breaking stride. “Our business is concluded.”  
  
“Like hell it is!” Kresnik snarled. “You wanna tell me what the fuck just happened?”  
  
“An experiment,” Maxwell shrugged. “A test. Nothing more.”  
  
“Well, fucking warn the guy piloting the ship when you’re gonna pull some magic shit and jump us into a crash landing!” Kresnik railed. “Where the hell are we, even?”  
  
“Nav system says…” Raney tapped at her bracer. She furrowed her brow. “...fuck. We’re all the way in the Core.”  
  
“Bullshit,” Kresnik growled. “The Dragonfly’s fast, but she ain’t _ that _ fast. All the way to the Core from the Outer Rim? That’s a month of flying, maybe even more.”  
  
Maxwell blew out an impatient sigh. He idly slapped his cane into the palm of his hand.  
  
“Is that what you were after?” Kresnik wondered. “Is that what was more valuable than a whole cargo pod full of rare minerals? Some kind of crazy hyperspace booster?”  
  
Maxwell chuckled mirthlessly.  
  
“...Such small-minded thinking,” he said. “It is _ so _ much more than that.”  
  
Kresnik heard the danger in Maxwell’s tone. He snapped his pistol up to aim--  
  
Maxwell tapped his cane against the ground. Kresnik, Raney and Ophelia seized and went still, their weapons half-drawn, bound with auras of toxic green light.  
  
“I was going to say you had outlived your usefulness,” Maxwell said, a cruel smile on his face. “But I was wrong. I have one more use for you. The jump you just saw was a mere preliminary test. Now, you shall bear witness to a grand experiment-- a test of those who think themselves worthy to defend this galaxy.”  
  
Kresnik grit his teeth. His finger twitched.  
  
Maxwell turned away, striding to the edge of the clearing and looking out across the hills below. The city stretched out below him, looking dreamlike and serene amidst gentle banks of mist. He raised the Rift Needle, staining the morning fog a filthy, toxic green.  
  
“If this device can open a gate within one plane,” Maxwell declared, “then, surely, it can open a gate to another.”  
  
_ He doesn’t know what he’s doing, _ Harkov whispered in Nyx’s mind. _ He will destroy us. He will destroy everything. _ _  
_ _  
_ Nyx pursed her lips, but said nothing.  
  
Behind them, Kresnik was sweating, grunting with effort. Maxwell’s spell had frozen his body in place. But he was still linked to his armor, could still send it commands through the neural interface. Slowly, painfully, through whirring servos and straining joints, he forced himself to move…  
  
The Rift Needle rose from Maxwell’s hand, the central crystal shining green. It spun in mid-air, arcs of arcane energy sizzling between the crystal and Maxwell’s fingertips like shivering lightning. Power thrummed in the air, but it was a dormant power, hesitant, as if waiting for something more.  
  
Maxwell furrowed his brow, racking his brain for his prior research into the artifact.  
  
“Opening a warp gate within a single plane is simple enough,” Maxwell muttered to himself. “It can be powered by one’s own arcane energy. But to tear open a rift between planes, it needs more power. It needs a catalyst. A… sacrifice.”  
  
Maxwell glanced at Nyx. She gasped, and took a step back.  
  
“Professor?” she whimpered.  
  
One second passed. Two. Maxwell seemed to consider it for a dreadfully long time.  
  
He sniffed, haughty, and turned instead to the mercenary trio waiting behind.  
  
Kresnik took his shot.  
  
Maxwell’s stomach exploded in a spray of gore. The high-caliber round punched through his torso and threw him onto his back, his paralysis spell fizzling into nothing.  
  
The hunters fled, Raney only looking back for a moment before scurrying aboard the Dragonfly. There was a whooshing roar as the Dragonfly lit its drives.  
  
Nyx paid them little mind. She studied Maxwell’s ruined form, blood spilling out across his immaculate gray suit. She saw him gasping, feebly clutching at the wound in shock. She saw his agony, and felt nothing at all.  
  
Nyx picked up Maxwell’s engraved cane. She retrieved the Rift Needle, having fallen inert at her feet, and raised it once more to the light.  
  
The central crystal began to gleam with an eerie green glow. The Rift Needle’s ring separated into three concentric rings, spinning like a gyroscope.  
  
A beam of arcane power shot out of the Rift Needle and plunged into Maxwell’s chest. Acid-green fire spread across his form. Maxwell stared up at her, unable to speak, his eyes filled with impotent fury and stunned disbelief.  
  
“Do not be afraid,” Nyx intoned. “You will never be alone.”  
  
Maxwell became a human bonfire, burning a toxic green, pulsing with arcane power. He vanished into the Rift Needle, a spiral of emerald flame merging with its crystalline core. A moment later, with a flash like lightning and an echoing boom like a thunderclap, the Rift Needle fired.  
  
Nyx gazed up at the sky in wonder, her tattered cloak flitting in the otherworldly breeze, Maxwell’s cane clutched like a staff to her chest. A pillar of coruscating light shot into the sky with a banshee wail, dispelling the morning fog. High in the sky above her, the first storm clouds came rolling in, lit from within by a toxic green light…  
  
~*~  
  
_ “So, Aabha, how have you been?” _  
  
“Well, you know…” Aabha trailed off, sheepishly tugging her braid. “I’m sorry, are-- are you sure this is a good time? I still haven’t figured out the time zones…”  
  
_ “It’s quite alright. Class doesn’t start for another thirty minutes, at least,” _ Morgan smiled, his hands clasped behind his back. _ “If anything, you’d have to call even earlier to catch Syl. She’s already got her initiates running laps around campus.” _ _  
_ _  
_ Aabha laughed, smiling.  
  
“I miss you,” Aabha admitted softly. “We all do. Agent Crane, more than most.”  
  
_ “I’m not surprised,” _ Morgan chuckled. _ “But I’m glad she can still keep an eye on you, along with Jaki, Shanti, and the rest of the senior staff. How are they, by the way?” _ _  
_ _  
_ “Still getting used to having a kid like me in charge,” Aabha shrugged. “To be fair, so am I.”  
  
_ “Don’t sell yourself short, Aabha,” _ Morgan urged. _ “You earned this command. If it was just an issue of Syl and I getting transferred out, then Crane would have taken over. She has seniority. But you deserve this, Aabha, and you’ve done wonderfully so far. I’m proud of you.” _  
  
Aabha bowed her head, her cheeks warm. “Thank you, sir.”  
  
_ “How are Kit and Lily doing?” _  
  
“Oh, you know. Same as they’ve always been,” Aabha smiled, bashful. “They’ve been… amazing. I don’t know if I could’ve made it through these first couple of weeks without them.”  
  
_ “They’re a good team,” _ Morgan nodded. _ “Keep them close.” _  
  
A flash. A bang in the distance. Morgan’s hololithic form flickered for a moment, and then he was on his feet, staring at something out of projector range.  
  
“Something wrong?” Aabha wondered.  
  
_ “No, it just… looks like rain,” _ Morgan muttered, troubled. He flashed Aabha an apologetic smile. _ “Listen, Aabha. It was really nice seeing you, but I’m going to have to call you back. Take care, okay?” _  
  
Aabha blinked. “Oh. Yeah, of course. Take care.”  
  
Morgan’s hololithic form faded from view. Aabha pursed her lips, thoughtful.  
  
“...I wonder what that was about,” she murmured. The intercom chirped.  
  
_ “Aabha?” _  
  
“Go ahead, Captain.”  
  
_ “I’ve got an incoming transmission for you. But it’s rough-- I mean _ ** _really_ ** _ rough.” _  
  
“Send it to my room,” Aabha said.  
  
The holoprojector came to life. Robyn wasn’t kidding-- the audio was a garbled mess, and the hololithic video was filled with white noise and distorted voxels. Massive interference had gutted the transmission, making it a wonder it even managed to get to the Sparrow at all.  
  
Aabha couldn’t make out what they were saying. Their voices were muffled and mangled. But something about the projection gave her pause. She leaned in, squinting.  
  
“Is that… Kresnik…?”  
  
Her door banged open. Kit burst in, breathless.  
  
“Aabha,” she gasped, “you need to get up here right now.”  
  
Aabha followed Kit upstairs to the control room, where the rest of the team was already assembled. She met Ambrosia’s anxious eyes as she came in, Crane greeting her with a curt nod. She and Kit made their way through the crowd, finding a spot beside Lily and Lila.  
  
A woman was standing above the holoterminal, her luminous form decked in gleaming red and gold armor. Her fire-red hair and youthful freckles made a strange contrast to her gaunt features and grave expression. Soren stood in her shadow, his hands formally clasped behind his back, his normally impassive face pinched with dread.  
  
Aabha watched in growing horror, a hand over her mouth…  
  
_ “This is Knight-Commander Lorelei of the Watchtower Council to all allied channels,” _ the woman announced. _ “I am declaring an emergency recall of all Order assets. All assets not currently involved in deep-cover operations are to disengage and regroup. Section leaders, you are to assemble your units at staging grounds as approved by Order Intelligence, at the coordinates embedded within this broadcast. All units are to prepare for combat immediately. Providence Academy is under attack. I repeat, Providence Academy is under attack…” _  
  
~*~


End file.
